Paladin: Oath of the Mystic Fire v0.9b

Class Features

You gain the following class features.

Hit Dice: 1d10 per paladin level

Hit Points at 1st Level: 10 + your constitution modifier

Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d10 (or 6) + your constitution modifier per paladin level after 1st

Proficiencies

You gain the following proficiencies.

Armor: all armor, shields

Weapons: simple weapons, martial weapons

Tools: none

Saving Throws: wisdom, intelligence

Skills: choose two from arcana, athletics, history, insight, investigation, medicine, and religion

Equipment

You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:

• (a) a martial weapon and a shield or (b) two martial weapons
• (a) five javelins or (b) any simple melee weapon
• (a) a priest’s pack or (b) an explorer’s pack
• chain mail and a holy symbol

Arcane Sense

You are attuned to the weave. The presence of magic is tangible to you like a vapor hanging in the air.

As an action, you can use your magical ability to open yourself to seeing the magic that surrounds you. Until the end of your next turn, you see a magical aura around any creature or object within 60 feet that radiates magic and is not behind total cover. This ability can penetrate most barriers but it is blocked by 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead or 3 feet of wood or dirt. You sense that the creature or object is radiating magic, but cannot identify its type or purpose.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to 1 + your Intelligence modifier. When you finish a long rest, you regain all expended uses.

Lay on Hands

Your blessed touch can heal wounds. You have a pool of healing power that replenishes when you take a long rest. With that pool, you can restore a total number of hit points equal to your paladin level × 5.

As an action, you can touch a creature and draw power from the pool to restore a number of hit points to that creature, up to the maximum amount remaining in your pool.

Alternatively, you can expend 5 hit points from your pool of healing to cure the target of one disease or neutralize one poison affecting it. You can cure multiple diseases and neutralize multiple poisons with a single use of Lay on Hands, expending hit points separately for each one.

This feature has no effect on undead and constructs.

Fighting Style

At 2nd level, you adopt a style of fighting as your specialty. Choose one of the following options. You can’t take a Fighting Style option more than once, even if you later get to choose again.

Defense

While you are wearing armor, you gain a +1 bonus to AC.

Dueling

When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon.

Great Weapon Fighting

When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die for an attack you make with a melee weapon that you are wielding with two hands, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll. The weapon must have the two-handed or versatile property for you to gain this benefit.

Protection

When a creature you can see attacks a target other than you that is within 5 feet of you, you can use your reaction to impose disadvantage on the attack roll. You must be wielding a shield.

Spellcasting

By 2nd level, you have learned to draw on divine magic. Unlike other paladins who use prayer and meditation to prepare spells, you study from and maintain a spellbook in keeping with Mystra's emphasis on knowledge of the arcane. Like other paladins, you have access to all paladin spells once you are able to cast them. Mystra reveals the spells to the paladin, who in turn copies them into his or her spellbook for future preparation.

Preparing and Casting Spells

The Paladin table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your spells. To cast one of your paladin spells of 1st level or higher, you must expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a long rest.

You prepare the list of paladin spells that are available for you to cast, choosing any spell from the paladin spell list. When you do so, choose a number of spells equal to your Intelligence modifier + half your paladin level, rounded down (minimum of one spell). The spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots.

For example, if you are a 5th-level paladin, you have four 1st-level and two 2nd-level spell slots. With a Intelligence of 14, your list of prepared spells can include four spells of 1st or 2nd level, in any combination. If you prepare the 1st-level spell cure wounds, you can cast it using a 1st-level or a 2nd level slot. Casting the spell doesn’t remove it from your list of prepared spells.

You can change your list of prepared spells when you finish a long rest. Preparing a new list of paladin spells requires time spent in prayer and meditation: at least 1 minute per spell level for each spell on your list.

Spellcasting Ability

Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for your paladin spells, since their power derives from the strength of your convictions. You use your Intelligence whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your Intelligence modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a paladin spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.

Spell save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence modifier

Spell attack modifier = your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence modifier

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a holy symbol as a spellcasting focus for your paladin spells.

Divine Smite

Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon’s damage. The extra damage is 2d8 for a 1st-level spell slot, plus 1d8 for each spell level higher than 1st, to a maximum of 5d8. The damage increases by 1d8 if the target is an undead or a fiend.

Divine Health

By 3rd level, the divine magic flowing through you makes you immune to disease.

Sacred Oath

When you reach 3rd level, you swear the oath that binds you as a paladin forever. Up to this time you have been in a preparatory stage, committed to the path but not yet sworn to it. Now you choose an oath, such as the Oath of the Mystic Fire.

Your choice grants you features at 3rd level and again at 7th, 15th, and 20th level. Those features include oath spells and the Channel Divinity feature.

Oath Spells

Each oath has a list of associated spells. You gain access to these spells at the levels specified in the oath description. Once you gain access to an oath spell, you always have it prepared. Oath spells don’t count against the number of spells you can prepare each day.

If you gain an oath spell that doesn’t appear on the paladin spell list, the spell is nonetheless a paladin spell for you.

Channel Divinity

Your oath allows you to channel divine energy to fuel magical effects. Each Channel Divinity option provided by your oath explains how to use it.

When you use your Channel Divinity, you choose which option to use. You must then finish a short or long rest to use your Channel Divinity again.

Some Channel Divinity effects require saving throws. When you use such an effect from this class, the DC equals your paladin spell save DC.

Ability Score Improvement

When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.

Extra Attack

Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Aura of Protection

Starting at 6th level, whenever you or a friendly creature within 10 feet of you must make a saving throw, the creature gains a bonus to the saving throw equal to your Intelligence modifier (with a minimum bonus of +1). You must be conscious to grant this bonus.

At 18th level, the range of this aura increases to 30 feet.

Aura of Courage

Starting at 10th level, you and friendly creatures within 10 feet of you can’t be Frightened while you are conscious.

At 18th level, the range of this aura increases to 30 feet.

Improved Divine Smite

By 11th level, you are so suffused with righteous might that all your melee weapon strikes carry divine power with them. Whenever you hit a creature with a melee weapon, the creature takes an extra 1d8 radiant damage. If you also use your Divine Smite with an attack, you add this damage to the extra damage of your Divine Smite.

Cleansing Touch

Beginning at 14th level, you can use your action to end one spell on yourself or on one willing creature that you touch. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier (a minimum of once). You regain expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Sacred Oath

Becoming a paladin involves taking vows that commit the paladin to the cause of righteousness, an active path of fighting wickedness. The final oath, taken when he or she reaches 3rd level, is the culmination of all the paladin’s training. Some characters with this class don’t consider themselves true paladins until they have reached 3rd level and made this oath. For others, the actual swearing of the oath is a formality, an official stamp on what has always been true in the paladin’s heart.

Oath of the Mystic Fire

Now that Midnight has taken on the role of Mystra and her power has been restored post-spellplague, The Knights of the Mystic Fire have reemerged as an integral part of her church. Much as before, the Mystic Fire Knights work with priests of Mystra to locate lost sources of ancient magic and serve as guards and guard captains at Mystra's temples. They also seek out threats to the natural order of the world, like rogue fiends, rampaging monsters, and creatures created by reckless magical experiments.

Tenets of the Mystic Fire

Though the exact words and strictures of the Oath of the Mystic Fire vary, paladins of this oath share these tenets.

Knowledge is Virtue. The anguish in this world is the direct result of ignorance and recklessness. Learning deeply and the wisdom to apply that knowledge well are foundational principles of the faith.

Knowledge is Valuable. When knowledge is lost, the world becomes a darker place. Finding and disseminating lost knowledge and magic is nothing short of a defense against ruin.

Knowledge is Power. Knowledge can be used to help or harm, to enlighten or to render ignorant, to end or cause suffering. Treat it with respect and treat those who abuse it with righteous indignation.

Oath Spells

You gain oath spells at the paladin levels listed.

Oath of the Mystic Fire Spells

Channel Divinity

When you take this oath at 3rd level, you gain the following two Channel Divinity options.

Eldritch Defense. As a bonus action, you can utter a prayer of protection using your Channel Divinity. Temporarily add your Intelligence modifier to your Armor Class until one minute elapses, you drop to 0 hitpoints, or you fall unconscious.

Turn Commanded Creatures. You can use your Channel Divinity to utter mystic words that temporarily disrupt the magical commands directing constructs and summoned creatures. As an action, you present your holy symbol, and each construct and summoned creature within 30 feet of you that can perceive you must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, each affected target can’t take reactions and must roll a d10 at the start of each of its turns to determine its behavior for that turn.

Confusion Effect

At the end of each of its turns, an affected target can make a Wisdom saving throw. If it succeeds, this effect ends for that target. The effect also ends if the affected target takes damage or one minute expires.

Aura of Will

Starting at 7th level, you and friendly creatures within 10 feet of you can’t be Charmed while you are conscious.

At 18th level, the range of this aura increases to 30 feet.

Improved Eldritch Defense

Beginning at 15th level, your Eldritch Defense feature offers additional protection against spell casting. In addition to the Armor Class benefit of Eldritch Defense, you also gain advantage on all saving throws against spells for the duration of the Channel Divinity ability.

Vessel of the Weave

At 20th level, as an action, you can project an aura of arcane absorbtion. For 1 minute, light bends and warps around your body within a 10 foot radius, your primary weapon ignites with silver fire, and both normal and magical light sources within 10 feet of you have their illumination reduced by half.

• While this aura is active you may gain weave points. When an enemy targets you with a spell, you gain one weave point for each level of the spell slot used to cast it. You gain points for spells regardless of whether you make a saving throw or sustain damage. For all other potential damage sources, you gain one weave point each time you are attacked. You gain points for attacks regardless of whether you are hit or sustain damage.
• When you successfully hit a target with your ignited weapon, you may spend one or more weave points up to the maximum number of weave points you have accumulated. Each weave point spent does an additional 1d8 force damage to the target.
• Weave points are capped at twenty. Once the cap is reached, any further spells or attacks that would accumulate weave points are disregarded. The paladin may begin to accumulate weave points again after one or more weave points are spent.
• Weave points may only accumulate while the paladin wields the ignited weapon, but do not fade if the weapon is dropped. Once the aura has ended, weave points fade at a rate of two points per round until all remaining weave points are depleted.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

Breaking Your Oath

A paladin tries to hold to the highest standards of conduct, but even the most virtuous paladin is fallible. Sometimes the right path proves too demanding, sometimes a situation calls for the lesser of two evils, and sometimes the heat of emotion causes a paladin to transgress his or her oath.

A paladin who has broken a vow typically seeks absolution from a cleric who shares his or her faith or from another paladin of the same order. The paladin might spend an all night vigil in prayer as a sign of penitence, or undertake a fast or similar act of self-denial. After a rite of confession and forgiveness, the paladin starts fresh.

If a paladin wilfully violates his or her oath and shows no sign of repentance, the consequences can be more serious. At the GM’s discretion, an impenitent paladin might be forced to abandon this class and adopt another.

References